#WhyIMake: a LoveCrafts Story

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I’d love to share with you #WhyIMake, my LoveCrafts Blog Personality of the Year, Ink & Stitches entry:

I found my love of art first.

At a very young age, I was drawn to illustration. From the rough lines of Quentin Blake to the subtle tones of Beatrix Potter, I gobbled up books like Pop Tarts. Without fail, I always stopped to admire the pictures in every book I read. The more the merrier.

As I got older, I started taking art classes: drawing, pastels, acrylics, oils, and watercolors. I did a little of everything. I honed my skills as an artist, finding inspiration from the shapes and colors in nature and how they change with the seasons.

I found amigurumi.

When I was introduced to amigurumi, my drawings came to life! Now, I was able to think in 3-dimensions. When I was just starting out designing amigurumi, after I’d passed the see-through-the-stitches-loose-tension stage, I began making characters others had dreamed up.

I opened a shop on Etsy called GeekChicurumi, and sold patterns and plushies from my favorite anime, video games, and movies. It was successful enough to use as a source of income, but carpal tunnel set in from crocheting more than 8 hours a day! I knew that something had to change.

I found my writing.

Storytelling for children to be more precise. I had a story that hit me between the eyes that needed to be told. With the encouragement from my hubs to write it down, I switched to selling my GeekChic patterns so that my arms could rest, but my fingers were free to type away!

Page-after-page of my middle grade story, Adeline and the Mystic Berries, broke free. The story unfolded and in my daydreams I saw Adeline in 3D. I imagined the young, unprivileged, but creative girl none-the-less, making her own handmade outfits, living in her colorless world, and a new idea sparked.

I’d finally found my niche.

I dreamed of being an Author, Illustrator, and Crochet Designer, and finding an audience of creatives who would love reading my stories to their kids, grandkids, and friends, while creating the character plushies I’d designed to accompany them.

But first I had to make a name, a brand, for myself. I wanted people to trust that I would bring them quality patterns. I wanted crocheters to choose my patterns to fill their WIP sewing bags. So, I shared free patterns to introduce Ink & Stitches to the world. I shared my Happy Sunflower pattern on my blog, and it was a big hit, being made all around the world!

I created an Ink & Stitches YouTube channel to teach others how to crochet, to bring more people to the craft. I filled it with videos that helped work through my patterns released on my blog, ones that taught common stitches used in making amis, and ones that introduced my books too.

My brand would encompass all that I love to do.

I began designing C2C (corner-to-corner) crochet graphgans to share as CALs (Crochet Alongs). The Catghan and the Dogghan were both well received by all the cat and dog lovers in the crochet community and there are a fair few!

I wrote other stories.

Picture books this time. I surrounded myself with other Authors & Illustrators when I joined Storyteller Academy, founded by Author/Illustrator, Arree Chung (creator of Mixed). I drew inspiration from them and even got a chance to go to the SCBWI LA Conference and meet some of my favorite Authors & Illustrators!

During my time at Storyteller, I wrote and illustrated many stories, but there was one in particular that nagged at me…

… one about an orb spider named, Whimsy.

Wishweaver was a picture book, but although I had dreamed up Weyburn (the forests where Whimsy’s story takes place), and had filled her world with many well-thought-out characters, what I couldn’t pin down was the story itself. To create Whimsy’s tale and really dive into what I wanted it to be, I knew I needed more than 500 words or less to do it.

When I made the decision to turn her picture book into a chapter book, the whole of Weyburn opened up, and with it, the storyline I wanted to tell, about an orb spider who goes in search of answers as to what happened to the Wishweaver (a spider with the magic to grant wishes), and why another hasn’t come to take her place.

I wrote the story in a frenzy, sucking down pumpkin spice lattes at my local Starbucks. I’d written and re-written Wishweaver so many times as a picture book, I had a lot fleshed out already. It was just a matter of fitting all the pieces together in the best way possible and getting Whimsy where she needed to go. I had to make her story a reality, and I had to find just the right publisher to take it on.

I was going to make Wishweaver different than most of the chapter books I’d seen. I was determined to make mine longer and have even more illustrations than those that I’d traditionally seen for ages 7-9. When I came across Laura Ellen Anderson’s Amelia Fang series, I knew the layout of her books was what I wanted for Whimsy’s. Pages that had text and illustrations dancing around each other. Full spreads that brought you right there beside Whimsy on her journey to the Wishweaver Oak.

With the help of my publisher, Corgi Bits (a children’s imprint of Incorgnito Publishing Press), I was able to release Whimsy’s first book, all 240 pages of it, with over 100 illustrations, on Sept. 1, 2020.

Want to know the best part?

I’d created a crocheted amigurumi of the two main characters, Whimsy & Flit to go along with the book. First, Simply Crochet magazine helped spread the word about the book and crocheted characters in their 100th anniversary issue!

Then, the fabulous Crochet Now magazine, worked with me to publish the full pattern in the UK along with a book review, and Q&A interview to help promote the book in their 59th issue.

My head was spinning! It was exactly what I had dreamt up when I looked into my future as a creator. Now, the free pattern for Whimsy & Flit (in US terms) are also available for download here on my blog, Ravelry, & LoveCrafts.

Why do I Make?

I make because my imagination is relentless. It insists I share my stories and their characters with others, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. It’s exactly what drives me forward when my plate gets a bit overwhelming at times.

I have the job of making kids happy. I get to make them smile as they read my stories and hold onto their favorite characters from the book. I’d say I’ve found the best day job a crafty creator could ask for!

What’s next?

I’m on to making the illustrations for Whimsy’s second tale, set for release in the Spring of 2021. This one brings back a lot of characters from Wishweaver and introduces many new faces too. I can’t wait to share them with you!

In the meantime, I plan to release the Wishghan C2C CAL later this year, giving kids one more way to wrap themselves up in the Tales of Whimsy, literally. All that’s left is to grab a cup of cocoa and sit by a warm fireside snuggled up to read a good book. I’ll bring the marshmallows and magic!

Ink = Writing and Illustrating
& Stitches = Crocheting.